It’s a pleasure to welcome back mystery
author, Judy Penz Sheluk. Judy has just released her second mystery, Skeletons in the Attic, which is the
first book in her Marketville Mystery Series. Her debut mystery, The Hanged Man’s Noose, was published in
July 2015. Judy’s short crime fiction appears in World Enough and Crime, The
Whole She-Bang 2, Flash and Bang
and Live Free or Tri. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of
Canada, International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.
Find Judy on her website/blog at www.judypenzsheluk.com, where she interviews
other authors and blogs about her writing journey.
Judy’s blog topic is “Don’t Wait for the Muse”
“There was a moment when I changed from an
amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to
write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and
aren’t writing particularly well.” Agatha Christie.
I spent the better part of my teen years
and early twenties reading Agatha Christie; in fact, I’ve read every one of her
books, and credit Christie for my desire to write mysteries. But like Christie,
for many years I was an amateur. Actually, amateur is overstating it. I was
more of a “want-to be” writer. You know the type: the person who says they’re going
to write a book “one day.”
For me, “one day” took about three decades
from the time I put down Curtain,
Hercule Poirot’s final mystery. In between, I worked as a Credit &
Collections Manager, a Sales and Marketing Coordinator, and over the past
thirteen years, a freelance writer and editor. It wasn’t my fault, you see. I
was waiting for the muse to show up. I knew once the muse made an appearance
I’d be ready to write that book.
Except the muse never came. I decided to
take a creative writing class from Barry Dempster, an award-winning Canadian
author and poet. It was Barry who told me, “The muse will never come unless you
let her know you’re going to be there. Make time to write every day, even if
it’s only for thirty minutes, even if all you’re doing is sitting there,
staring at a blank page. One day, the words will come.”
They did. Faced with ten days off of all my
freelance gigs, I started writing my first book, The Hanged Man’s Noose, on Christmas Eve 2011. I wrote every day,
including Christmas and New Year’s Day. By the end of that ten-day period, I
had a few chapters written. It never got easy…but it did get easier, and by
February 2013, I’d finished writing and revising the book. Then I tried to find
an agent, and when that didn’t work out, I went to work looking for a
publisher.
I knew how elusive that muse could be, and
I knew I should start another book, but I couldn’t bear to write the sequel to
a book I hadn’t sold. I started Skeletons
in the Attic, determined to make it as different from Noose as I could: Noose
is written in third person, with multiple (primarily two) POVs. Skeletons, on the other hand, is written
in first person, and entirely from the POV of the protagonist, Calamity
(Callie) Barnstable. But this time, the Christie quote actually applied to me.
Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped waiting for the muse to show up and
graduated from want-to be writer to amateur writer to professional. Professional
writer. Now that has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Here’s a brief synopsis of Skeletons in the Attic:
What goes on behind closed doors doesn’t always stay
there…
Calamity (Callie) Barnstable isn’t
surprised to learn she’s the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate,
though she is shocked to discover she
has inherited a house in the town of Marketville—a house she didn’t know
existed. However, there are conditions attached to Callie’s inheritance: she
must move to Marketville, live in the house, and solve her mother’s murder.
Callie’s not keen on dredging up a
thirty-year-old mystery, but if she doesn’t do it, there’s a scheming psychic
named Misty Rivers who is more than happy to expose the Barnstable family
secrets. Determined to thwart Misty and fulfill her father’s wishes, Callie
accepts the challenge. But is she ready to face the skeletons hidden in the
attic?
Find Judy’s books on Amazon HERE:
